[Alberta's Child]

I'd be curious to know how that question would be answered. I could figure out how to do a rough measurement, but I'm sure it's wrong for a PhD exam where they're probably expecting some precision.

I just got this problem wrong on my first try, too. LOL.

[mairdie]

Interestingly enough, Chicago DIDN’T expect precision. What they taught was thinking, not calculation. Try your rough approach. I’ll bet you’ll be right.

Another example of a question on a sociology test was that the Queen of England is visiting the university and all the men’s urinals are turned off. Is this an example of deference or demeanor?

Probably one of the reasons he was my FIRST husband, was that we used to fall asleep playing mental chess, or him setting me square roots to solve to two decimal places. I got really good at that. We married for five years from when I was 19. Pure luck to marry a really good man that young.

[mairdie]

The answer is the angle of the wake of the boat.

I just mentioned that to Paul, my second and last husband, and he remembered another U of Chicago PhD question.

How many piano tuners are in Chicago?

It required you to make the right assumptions. The numbers were just based on the assumptions you made. How many people? How many have pianos? How many get their pianos tuned? How many piano tuners would that support?

So you might want a U of C person as part of your bridge design team, but you’d be best off to add a PhD from MIT to actually build the thing.